


Metamorphosis

by A_Single_Drop_of_Winter



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Jessica Riley (Until Dawn) Appreciation, Not Beta Read, Post-Until Dawn (Video Game), Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:46:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18312218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Single_Drop_of_Winter/pseuds/A_Single_Drop_of_Winter
Summary: Jessica thinks the fear of heights is a rather new development.Or.A character study of sole survivor Jessica.





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> Because I apparently can only write angst.

Jessica wasn’t always scared of heights. Actually it was a rather recent development. Probably due to the incident on Mount Washington.

Which she wasn’t supposed to think about according to her therapist, yes she had a therapist, but it’s not like she had any friends left to mock her. They were all gone, as gone as Beth and Hannah were before them until suddenly Jessica was the sole survivor.

She could still feel it, flying through the air faster than anything known to man. She doesn’t know what is was. She didn’t actually see it, only a blur of stretched, dry, cracked over skin. A blur of sightless eyes that were clearer than a glass casket. Although the dark red of Jessica’s own life dripping from the creature’s mouth seemed like a cruel parallel to Snow White’s blood red lips. In the film Snow White’s lips were crimson, now Jessica knows blood is more deep and dark, like wet soil after a storm.

Yet Snow White got a happy ending, and Jessica… well she survived. That should be good enough for her, but it didn't quite feel like it was. Maybe if she could still sit at the place where her mother used to hold her close and tell her fairytailes. A cozy bay window with a heavy quilt to sit on. A window with glass so clear you could practically fall through.

Jessica used to find solace and peace looking out at the world through her bay window. Now even standing near it made her sick to her stomach and green to her face. Everytime she tripped and fell it was the sensation of falling down a crashing elevator all over again; her heart seemed to drop to her stomach, and her breath seemed to turn into harsh gusts of wind until she was wheezing in a curled up ball made from her weak, weak limbs. Weak limbs that were an awful defense against monsters that live in mines and murder your fragilely made friends.

But that was okay because Jessica survived, sure heights and falling scared her to the point where it impeded her everyday life. But she was lucky to be alive, unlike her other friends. Though their faces haunt her dreams more than the... _thing_ that destroyed them. Her therapist was always telling her to be more positive; she was working on it, but it’s hard to smile when she knows it could’ve been a permanent mark on her face if it had been carved out with nails sharper than any blade. When she knows teeth made more jagged than any cliff wanted to rip a chunk out of the delicate flesh on her neck. Wanted to savour the taste of her blood the same way it feasted on her friends. Corpse or alive; the fresher the kill the warmer the meal.

Jessica didn’t know much about the beast that killed her friends and dragged her around the mountain into the mines. Only that it was hungry and liked meat: carnivorous. But she was alive and that’s really all that counted.

She looked in the mirror but the sight didn’t change from who she was before. Braided pale blond hair, dark blue eyes, a picture perfect face; the subject of envy and lust alike. Though she swore there was a time when she felt confident without makeup, her new reason for not wearing it was the time and effort it took to remove smeared mascara stains that painted her face as something dreary and dead: a husk.

Other than that she was truly the same as before; picturesque and beautiful. Her mosaic of blue and purple bruises had faded over time, and her scratches hadn’t even scarred. There was no permanent physical damage sustained. So what if she was a little quieter; though her therapist said she had gone stalked-silent. “You sit in silence hoping that whatever your scared of won’t hear you, but silence doesn’t off put predators Jessica.”

She didn’t tell him to call her Jess.

Yet she was still a girl on the cusp of adulthood: a new stage in her life to enter a cocoon and emerge a new person.

Jessica could just pretend that the screaming ringing in her ears were church bells forgiving her for living when her friends didn’t; instead of the screech of a predator on the move. She could just pretend that she didn’t remember the taste of her own blood from when she bit her tongue as she was flying around like a speeding bullet.  She could just pretend that the fingerprints practically etched into her bones were without memories, and that monsters only existed in the stories. Though she would’ve prefered an evil queen and huntsman to her own plight any day; Snow White didn’t realize how easy she had it to be hunted instead of bait for the hunter.

And she knows she was bait, she knows it like she knows how to braid hair and how to do the splits. She knows because Mike came for her. To rescue her, he did. In the back of her mind she wonders what would’ve happened if Mike had abandoned her and warned the others. Would they all be alive? Jessica had tried to swallow down her guilt into the pits of her stomach, but the taste had remained and clung onto everything she ate after. One casualty in the face of six was nothing after all.

Jessica once tried to bring it up to her therapist, but he quickly shut her down. Told her to let it go and think positively. So she let it go, she sends it to sit in the corner until its developed a hoarding problem, that will eventually engulf the other thoughts and feelings with the oppressive weight of its belongings.

Sometimes she wanted to scream, just to see if anyone could hear her (Mike did, he came for her). Her voice would eventually grow hoarse until the scratchiness would be enough to cut the ties that bound her to the people who she hadn’t left behind buried six feet under.

But that was okay, it’s all okay because she survived. She should be happy to just be alive.

And she _was_.

It was just difficult to remember that when _nobody_ believed her.

Drunk kids in the mountain all alone, they thought she was crazy. That was why they sent her to therapy, not any of the other reasons. Not for the fear of falling or heights, not for spirits that grasped at her ankles and prodded her shoulders, not for the pulled skin and needle-teeth crafted straight from a fairy tale.

Not any of that, but the truth was unbelievable; therefore so was she

**Author's Note:**

> I just figured there was no way Jessica was walking away the same person if she lived. Forgive me if she's out of character, I just had a lot of thoughts I wanted to get down. 
> 
> Also because my laptop is being weird I'm posting this from my phone.
> 
> And yeah, I have no idea where the Snow White comparison came from.


End file.
